


TAZ Balance Shorts

by BrushStrokeSun



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: DUCKS!, Stolen Century memories being remembered, The Stolen Century, carving, spoilers for Day of Story and Song, spoilers for everything? basically covers the whole cannon timeline, uuuh talks about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:07:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrushStrokeSun/pseuds/BrushStrokeSun
Summary: i did a re-listen of the whole Balance campaign and have been slowly writing out flash fiction type stories.each chapter is it's own thing, tags will be updated as i add





	1. The Starblaster's First (And Only) Funeral

The day the rat dies wasn’t monumental. But Lucretia wrote about it. So they all remember it.

Magnus found the body. He doesn’t remember what he was doing when he did, but he remembers his heart cracking. Like it did the first cycle when black tendrils swallowed up crying, dying, running creatures. Magnus remembers that Lup insisted on a Viking funeral, flames and a little wooden boat that Magnus himself had carved. He remembers that it was… fast.

Taako remembers that Davenport wasn’t at the funeral. Taako assumed that their Captain thought they were being childish but then, later, he found their leader standing. Silent, still, at the wheel of the ship. And they stood, side by side in the quiet.  
For so long. Until Davenport broke it.  
“Just another life. Another… thing we couldn’t save, huh?”

Barry is certain that he wanted to ask about keeping the body, but doesn’t remember ever asking. He does remember Merle grumbling about never giving kids pets, arms crossed at the flash in the pan funeral. He remembers Lup cajoling Merle into saying a prayer. A life god’s prayer fort he dead. 

Merle creates on instinct. Death is an… inevitable. But so is life. Lup sets the thing ablaze and it takes seconds for it to be ash and brushed aside and everyone was on their way. Going about their evening.  
He remembers that night, watering his plants with extra care. With attention. And when he sleeps he sees fire. 

Davenport didn’t like funerals. Doesn’t like. He never in all his years learned how to toe the line of mourning and celebration. And anyways, it was a rat. So he stood on the deck and stared down at the empty planet beneath them. Another empty cycle.  
And then Taako joined him. He had never hear Taako go so long without opening his mouth.  
“You fucking keeping count my man? That shit will keep you up at night!”  
Some cycles, none of them slept much.

Lup loved any excuse to set shit on fire. Brightly on fire. She remembers her twin standing at herright when the boat burned. Lucretia to her left, Magnus solemn across the flames, Barry and Merle a little less so. Barry was the one who spoke up, “Shouldn’t we say. Something?” Lup poked Merle into reciting a prayer over the ruined ship.  
Lup gave Lucretia the ashes, not really knowing why.

And Lucretia poured the ashes into an empty glass jar, and sealed the lid. And sat at her desk to write about the only funeral the Starblaster had ever seen. Even if it was just for a rat.  
She wrote down everything, after all.

So they all forgot it. And then, they all remembered.


	2. Time + Information = Sense? Connection?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> magnus thinks about things  
> mostly, he thinks about ducks, and about people he loves

There are things that now, after everything, make a lot more sense to Magnus. Now, after the world didn’t end, after he remembered. Things now seem to… connect.

Julia’s stew was nearly, impossibly identical to the meal Taako made on the cycles when they couldn’t leave the Starblaster. Even when he didn’t remember, it was his favorite meal.   
When he dreams about the Chalice’s offer, now it get mixed into memories of planer system that was only flowers. Fields and fields wrapped around the planet and tangled with rivers, just: flowers. Merle had never been more blissful. And Lup and Taako made a lavender oil perfume that seemed to leak into everyone’s clothes, into the ship itself. I worked lavender oil into the varnish…

The bear mask at the races,  
the statue in the time sick town,  
the voidfish’s lament they only seemed to sing after Magnus found them again.

So yes, some things, things that didn’t make any sense when he had forgotten, made sense now.

Some things made less sense.

How everyone he loved, loved ducks. That’s a weird one, maybe. Magnus remembered how angry he was when the first duck came out clumsy and rough and looking not much like a duck. He remembers that, deep in his gut, when he offered his final version to the voidfish cave he was so goddamn proud.   
And, after that cycle, he couldn’t stop making ducks.  
Taako said they were silly but his room became covered in them, beaks peaking out of piles of clothes and gemstones and everything else the elf had hoarded from the cycles.  
Barry would hide them around the ship, in coffee mugs and on top of doorframes. In Merle’s flowerpots and, somehow, bizarrely, rattling around inside Barry’s litch form ribs. That was a little creepy.  
Lup enchanted one to burn indefinitely. Davenport said it was a fire hazard.   
Lucretia’s desk acquired a small army of the little wooden creatures, equal parts paperweights and decorations.   
Julia loved the ducks. Charming, she said. Quirky too. She tucked them around their house, on the hearth and the bed side table. There was one etched into the door frame of the gazebo he married her in.   
When Killian handed him a wet stone in the shape of a duck on that Candlenights, Magnus thought his heart was going to burst. And he thought he knew why, but there was a fullness he was missing and when he tried to pull at it – static. And he forgot.   
And after – Merle gave all his to Mavis. And Mookie.   
Kravits admitted sheepishly that there was one on his desk in the Astral Plane. Lup saw it and teased him mercilessly, only getting worse when he got a little too overprotective of the wooden figure when Lup offered her infinite burning enchantment. 

Angus sits in Magnus’ workshop and fiddles with a little duck, one small enough to hide in his closed fist. Chattering about school and Taako and Krav and his detective work while Magnus works. On a duck.  
A larger, ornate carving. A wedding gift, for Carey and Killian.  
It’s almost been a year, and it doesn’t all make sense. But maybe, it doesn’t always have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeey thanks for reading friend!  
> comment if you've got some thoughts and/or feelings

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments are my favorite.  
> also, if you have a prompt for a flash fiction to add to this work, please comment!


End file.
